Playground Rules for Presidents (and other adults)

Remember grade school?

Somebody gets hurt on the playground. The decent kid runs for the nurse. The other kid points at the bleeding and shouts, “Haha, that’s what you get for not liking me.”

Congratulations, America: the second kid runs the class.

In September, a man is shot dead at a college. On September 12, the President calls for unity through success while urging supporters to seek “revenge at the voter box.” That’s the emotional equivalent of hugging the family and then handing out pitchforks in the receiving line.

Pick a lane, chief.

Days later, when a late‑night host says something you don’t like, you don’t ignore it, you don’t win the argument, you celebrate his show going dark and nod toward punishing his network.

That’s not “free speech.”

That’s the state staring at a theater and tapping the EXIT sign with a baton.

Now, two people are murdered. Within a day of the deaths being reported, the President posts a eulogy about himself, claims the dead man caught TDS like it’s cholera, and declares America is in its “Golden Age” (spoiler: the gold seems to be spray‑on). Even his usual allies wince.

When Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie are the empathy caucus, you’ve driven off the map.

Spare us the “but he fights” routine. Playground translation: he throws sand. On Sept. 10 he condemned “demonization,” then spent the fall demonizing. He says he’s defending free speech; his administration’s point men played license chicken with broadcasters and vowed to “target” citizens for speech the government dislikes, only to “clarify” when the Constitution called collect.

You don’t get to cosplay Madison on Monday and audition for the Ministry of Truth on Tuesday.

Here’s the part you don’t need a PhD or a talking head to explain; you learned it before you could multiply:

• When someone dies, you don’t make it about you.
• When someone says something dumb, you beat them with better speech, not a government stick.
• When you’re the adult in the room, your words set the weather.

Leaders aren’t thermostats; they’re thermometers and heaters. They tell us where we are and they turn the temperature down. This one checks the thermostat, cranks it to Broil, and then blames the smoke alarm.

No, we’re not saying his post caused a murder. We are saying this: the President keeps telling millions of people that opponents aren’t opponents; they’re diseased. Social science has a word for that: dehumanization. It’s the solvent that loosens all the bolts that keep a democracy from shaking apart.

You don’t need a regression table to feel it in your bones.

Back to the playground: every kid knows the difference between tough and cruel. Tough walks the crying classmate to the nurse. Cruel yells “serves you right” and takes a victory lap. If you still can’t tell which one you’re watching, that’s not politics; that’s character.

EDW’s rule of thumb going forward:

If a president can’t get through a murder without writing an ad for himself, he can’t get through a crisis without writing an alibi. And if your “unity” plan starts with revenge and ends with license threats, it isn’t unity. It’s a racket.

We roasted ghouls who danced on Charlie Kirk’s grave. We’ll roast the President who dances on Rob Reiner’s. Principle doesn’t care who you voted for.

Grow up, put the sand down, and act like the kid who calls the nurse. The rest of us have a country to keep.

Executive Dysfunction Weekly